Brrr.

I'm pretty sure that is the way my kids see me at times.

Today we went to Rabbit Hash with a hopeful me that I could get some really good family photos. I have been planning on this since the last time Mike was home. Ideally I really wanted to get pictures when the leaves were changing, but now they are all gone and it was colder than heck today. So I have a lot of pictures of unhappy freezing children. It was worth the effort, and maybe one or two good photos that may make the Christmas card.

The kids always think a trip to Rabbit Hash is worth getting to pick out a bottled soda though.

bummer

Bummer. My computer crashed on Thanksgiving. Resulting in losing all of my digital pages that I have done, plus all of my digital scrapbooking stuff. I am bummed. I think I can get some of my scrapping stuff back.... but the pages..... *poof* gone.

At least I am the redo queen and the thought of going back and redoing them doesn't scare me. I have most of the pages I've done on my blog or in an online gallery so that is no big deal.

Thankfully all of my photos were on an external hard drive and I have all of those. I would be sick to death if those were lost. I'm lucky. I have had friends that have lost all of their photos. Just when you think computers are your friends, they go and remind you who is boss.

Also thankfully.... Mike worked so hard trying to get it all fixed on Thanksgiving, in between cooking a delicious meal that we were also incredibly grateful to have him sitting at the table with us. As hard as he tried, we had to head out on black friday to get a new hard drive. So now I have a new and improved computer. Which I will baby and remember to never mock or cuss at. One day offline about made me crazy!

No flurries as promised on Thanksgiving day. We had a little bit of rain. Today was certainly cold enough that I was surprised we didn't get any flurries. I can tell it's coming though.... and I'm still excited for that first snow. :)

home.

Home! Thank you for the nice photo Megan.

I still wake up in the middle of the night and can't believe that Mike is here. :) He has actually been home since last Wednesday night, but between him getting used to the 8 hour time difference again, and coming home with a crummy airplane crud sickness.... he's finally had a real NORMAL day.

* Went to Indiana for a short road trip. It was drizzling. We saw wild turkeys walking on the
side of the road!

* Had real - honest to goodness - Mexican food that was spicy, deep fried and the closest I've
had to Phoenix food in a year and a half.

* Mike turned on the gas on our fireplace. Which I cannot wait to have on while snuggling under
a blanket while watching TV tonight. We are supposed to have flurries on Thanksgiving day,
which would be magical! Bring on the flurries and snow!

It's a BEAUTIFUL DAY!

Like the song says: The heart is a bloom - Shoots up through the stony ground. If my heart could sprout wings, it would fly right out of me today. I feel like that bloom today. :)

Today is beyond awesome. First of all, it's overcast and rainy which is usually a good day for some intense U2 listening therapy. (I'll use any excuse really.....lol) but I have always, for some reason or another, loved watching U2 videos on days like this. Ever since Under A Blood Red Sky decades ago. Rainy days always remind me of those days of staying in and watching them. They still do.


I have the Vertigo tour from Chicago in right now as I go about cleaning the kitchen and doing my downstairs chores.

BUT all the cool little tie-ins today. That airport that is in the above photo? Charles de Gaulle International in Paris. - Where the photo for the album was taken and the video for Beautiful Day was shot. But what else you say???? MY HUSBAND IS THERE! 4,000 miles closer to coming home!!!!!

I can't stand it. Today is the BEST DAY EVER. Or .... tomorrow will be when I pick him up from the airport here. I did get to IM with him earlier without any internet interruptions (Yemen internet is frustrating to say the least.) and it just feels..... GOOD. Content. Happy.

It's the perfect storm of happy today. Mike coming home, U2 and a great moody weather day.



I am you and you are mine
Love makes nonsense of space And time... will disappear
Love and logic keep us clear Reason is on our side, love...

Miracle Drug

POTD. It was raining when I stopped to get the mail before heading out to pick up Megan from school. These trees are by the mailbox bank. I loved the droplets of water on the berries. - Someday..... a macro lense to take better close ups.

Monday!

(This kid, unlike me, isn't very excited about it being so early on a Monday morning. He looks tired.)

I don't know if I've ever been so excited about a Monday. This is a big week for the family! I feel like there is a constant smile on my face! So.... I figured this would be a good week to do a photo a day, and finish the layout on Sunday. I love looking back at these after awhile. So stay tuned!

The weekend went by pretty quickly. I had plans of working my children like crazy to clean the house. Actually it's their mess anyway, so I think that is fair. ;) But... plans change. In the early afternoon on Saturday Trevor's friend called to see if he could play. I reminded him that he could go for a little bit but there were still chores to do. Of course a few hours into play, I get a phone call, "Mom, can I go out to dinner with them?" OK.... Then after dinner, "Mom, can I have a sleep over?" I talked to the other mom, who loves having Trevor over because he's a polite guest (Love hearing things like that, it makes me feel like I'm doing my job right!) and she told me the list that Trevor was then telling her to tell me to bring over. DS, Bionicles, Mario Party for the wii....and the boring things like toothbrushes, etc.

Then Megan had been over at a friend's house since lunchtime. She shows up and asks if she can have a sleepover too. She packs and is off. It's just me and Matthew for the night. Who is upset that he didn't have any plans. So let's ditch the chores and do something ourselves. We had dinner and went out for ice cream. I gave him a small Lego Star Wars thing I had bought for his stocking, and we had our own sleepover. It was fun. It has been a long time since I've been able to have one on one time with any of the kids. It was really nice.

So here is the beginning of our exciting week. :)

Veteran's Day.

Just a quick post for Veteran's Day.

My kids don't have the day off of school like a lot do, but I actually prefer the way that our school handles the day. I'm sure that they don't get it off due more to the fact that they have to factor in snow days that are soon to come, and making it all up at the end of the year. We really don't even get a real "fall break" but more a three day weekend. I guess it all works out in the end. Especially when we've had a week off that wasn't planned due to ice storms or snow. I notice the kids don't seem to complain then. ;)

However, Veteran's Day is pretty awesome at the kid's school. There is a huge HUGE flag raising ceremony in the morning that lasts forever. Any child who's parents or grandparents or any family member really, are a veteran, they come dressed in their uniforms. It's a pretty impressive sight. There is a lot of patriotic music, lessons about what the day is about, and the best..... if your class is lucky enough to have a veteran come to your class, they talk about their experiences and the kids get to ask questions.

Which I think is really super cool. It puts a face on the day, and not just the "we have the day off of school and we don't really know why other than mom goes and shops at the mall because the sales are good."

Matthew came home and was talking to me about his visit in his classroom today. His speaker today was a Vietnam vet. He said that one child asked if he had ever lost a friend during the war and the man started to cry and said yes. I think that really hit hard with some of the kids. I know Matthew has been asking me about it since he got home. It has brought up some pretty good dialog.... except for now he is convinced that he wants to join the military next year. LOL.

I'm posting and running tonight. I am looking forward to this time next week having a snoring man (getting used to the time difference again!) on the couch while I watch TV! Yeeeeeeee! :)

I love templates.

Seriously. Digital templates have saved my life. I have a million event type photos I have needed to get stories down before I forget...and I finished both sides of this tonight while the kids built Lego sets and colored. Good grief, these photos are from September of 2006. That feels like a lifetime ago. Now, I can take that little bit of information and put it in the little recycle garbage can in my head. - And now have room for other important things....like whose socks are whose and other mom stuff. ;)

Not too much to update here. We are incredibly boring, and yet somehow keeping really busy.

10 more days! 10 more days! 10 more days!!!